


Survival of the Furriest

by frogfarm



Series: Buffy Etcetera: (Shorts) By Request [14]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Betrayal, Community: femslash_minis, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-07
Updated: 2007-09-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 06:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12648213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frogfarm/pseuds/frogfarm
Summary: Amy knows she's not super, and she's never considered herself a villain.References "Gingerbread"/"The Killer In Me"/"Empty Places"; one S8 comics bit.





	Survival of the Furriest

**Author's Note:**

> For Round 19 of femslash_minis.
> 
> Requested: Arson, a blindfold, Amy running from the law

Amy knows she's not super, and she's never considered herself a villain. Pigs being cleaner than their reputation, it must also be the case with her. People say _you dirty rat_ , call them cunning like it's a bad thing, but the only way to survive is to be smarter than the other guy. Brainwash the teacher into B's, instead of A's; become small and fast, not a fire-breathing target for destruction. Amy remembers every lurid, lucid moment of those lost years, running so fast on that goddamn wheel she thought her little heart would burst.  
  
Experiences like that either drive you insane, or teach invaluable lessons. Or both.  
  
She's always looking out for others in the same boat. With Warren, she was just in the right place at the right time. She keeps him on ice while she trolls the Wicca group, which turns out to be shallow water and a total dud, Willow's puppy eyes and a love-blinded Slayer completing the humiliation. Hurt like a mother to take that kind of hit, knowing the big gun she still had in reserve. Her dad's taking up precious space in a perfectly good house, and while Amy isn't quite ready to take the plunge into murder herself, living out of boxes and cans is making her feel downright disreputable.

She toys with a number of ideas, of varying nastiness and sometimes downright pleasant. With no real reason to hate the man -- she'd been the very model of absent daughter -- even her resentment at his inconvenient presence is more protocol. Amy ends up bewitching his boss into that promotion he was always yammering about, and thinks no more of it.

Except a week later he turns up dead, and while she thinks it's sad, she's not overly interested in the particulars. More in how for some reason, and in a stunning reversal of traditional ineptitude, the Sunnydale police take a subsequent strong interest in her relative good fortune, proximate to his death.  
  
For very apparent reasons, it's a lot harder to brainwash more than one person. Particularly when the police department appears to be hiring its own shamans. This never would have happened with Mayor Wilkins.  
  
Torching the place only makes them more suspicious. Instinct saves her yet again when she realizes she's tuning in to the cosmic broadcast; one ear to the ground, like the animals, sensing the coming quake. She watches the first waves of a legion of homeowners fleeing their castles, moves in and squats the first to suit her needs. Even with glamors and preservation, it's a relief to be able to leave Warren in one basement.

That leaves her free to watch Buffy's home, new girls arriving every day, until one of those faces looks familiar. She has only the vaguest of pre-rat Faith memories, but it's plain to see the woman isn't exactly welcome. Eavesdropping yields tantalizing clues, and Amy hardly notices the continued deterioration of the state of Sunnydale as she struggles to put the pieces together.

 

  


* * *

  


 

Police presence is light, or she never would have left the house. But it's near two weeks since she crossed her own threshold, relying on magickal bugs to keep her in the loop while she sits alone in the dark, stewing in her juices. She hates feeling stuck in a maze; like she's wasting her last chance to get out while the getting's good. Time to party like it's 1999.  
  
Since she missed most of it. Plus the two after that.

She's at the bar nursing a double cran-vodka when Faith and her crew make their appearance. At first she panics, unable to decide on a spell or trying to quietly sneak out the back. But when the constabulary make their own appearance, Amy doesn't need magic to to fade into the crowd. She watches them frog-march the Slayer out the door; grudgingly cheers on the girls when they swarm over the cops like a swarm of teenage locusts.

She listens to the shouts and crashing blows that echo outside in the alley, waiting for the fight to die down. For her moment. Which is right after Buffy tells the Potentials to go home. After Amy listens to Faith, sticking up for herself; after Buffy punches the other Slayer, knocks her down and walks away without a word or backward glance.

She smoothes out her dress. Straightens her hair.

"Hey."

Faith's gaze sharpens. "Who are you?"

Amy doesn't smile.

"I think we can help each other."

 

  


* * *

  


 

Unsurprisingly, Faith is quite amenable to the idea of betraying the Buffy brigade.  
  
Naturally, it's her turn next.

 

  


* * *

  


 

She wakes up dazed, blindfolded and gagged. Apparently, Faith remembered her letting it slip that she never did master magic of the unspoken kind. Takes a while to gnaw through her bonds; vaguely insulted Faith didn't kill her. What's more demeaning is the position they left her in: Hogtied, upended on her own couch, post-it note on one cheek that reads

  
YOU FUCKED UP

YOU TRUSTED US

 

She doesn't make the same mistake twice.


End file.
